LEWISTON – Musicians performing at Bates College in September include Frank Glazer, a prominent Maine pianist and Bates artist in residence; Atsuko Hirai, a soprano and member of the Bates faculty; and the Verdehr Trio, acclaimed for its development of the violin-clarinet-piano trio repertoire.

Glazer opens the college’s 2004-05 Noonday Concert Series at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 14, with music by Bach, Busoni, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Bates Noonday Concerts typically last around 30 minutes.

The Verdehr Trio, which has commissioned some 170 pieces of music during a career of more than 30 years, performs at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 19. The trio’s pianist, Yuri Funahashi, lives in Maine, and the program includes a piece by Bates faculty member Philip Carlsen. Also on the program is the world premiere of “Playground,” a composition by Barry Conyngham, chair of Australian studies at Harvard University.

Brahms songs

Hirai, the Kazushige Hirasawa Professor of History at Bates, will be accompanied by Glazer in a program of 10 songs by Johannes Brahms. This noonday concert takes place at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21.

Finally, Glazer offers music by Mozart, Schubert and Schumann in a recital at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24.

The Verdehr Trio has molded and defined the personality of the violin-clarinet-piano trio. The ensemble has performed worldwide in chamber concerts and in trio-concerto repertoire for orchestra. Its recordings includes the 17-volume series “The Making of a Medium,” documenting the trio’s contributions to the repertoire. An article about the trio appears in the new Groves Dictionary of Music.

Though in residence at Michigan State University in East Lansing, where violinist Walter Verdehr and clarinetist Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr teach, pianist Yuri Funahashi lives in Wilton and teaches at the University of Maine in Farmington. She is known statewide for her performances with such chamber ensembles as the Nordica Trio and the Funahashi-Pane Duo.

A ‘Playground’ première

A highlight of the trio’s Bates program is the world premiere of Conyngham’s “Playground.” The trio also will perform its own arrangement of the andante-allegretto from Beethoven’s music for the ballet “The Creatures of Prometheus”; Carlsen’s 1987 “Penumbra”; Peter Sculthorpe’s 1992 “Dreamtracks”; adaptation of music by songs by George and Ira Gershwin; and “Tibetan Dance,” composed and dedicated to the Verdehr Trio by Bright Sheng.

One of Maine’s best-known pianists, Glazer’s long career includes numerous recordings, and countless solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder.

Glazer, 89, taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. The couple founded the Saco River Festival, held in Cornish every summer. A student of pianist Artur Schnabel in the 1930s and ’40s, Glazer is one of the few remaining protégés of that great musician.

Hirai is a graduate of Tokyo University who earned her Ph.D. in government at Harvard. She and Glazer perform together occasionally at Bates.

Carlsen has degrees from the University of Washington, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His compositions include works for the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Bates’ gamelan orchestra, and a commission from the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center in connection with the orchestra’s residency in Maine. Carlsen teaches half-time at UMF and half-time at Bates, where he conducts the college orchestra.

The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St., is the site of all four concerts, which are open to the public at no cost. For more information, people can call 786-6135.